


Insubstantial Country

by hal_incandenza



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - All Media Types, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - John Le Carré
Genre: And as much of a spy plot as I could muster, Angst, Betrayal, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, M/M, Making Out, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:58:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hal_incandenza/pseuds/hal_incandenza
Summary: "This was a supposed to be a simple surveillance job, not a burning city job."It's fall, 1952. Jim Prideaux and Bill Haydon are positioned to move up the Circus ladder—if they can navigate their latest tedious, perilous assignment. But the shadows of East Berlin are not the ones that will keep Jim awake tonight.





	Insubstantial Country

**Author's Note:**

> I absolutely loved this book and, though I watched both the movie and miniseries, this is basically fic for the book. John le Carré is such a good writer that that seems ridiculous to even try, but here we are. That said, I did steal one thing I liked from the miniseries, and one thing I liked (read: cried about) from the movie script. You'll probably recognize both. And I did my best with the spy plot (such as it is) and lingo, but hopefully that isn't the content that stands out. Best read while listening to [this album](https://youtu.be/aUxfnCfZOQg). Enjoy!

“The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”  
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.”  
—Elizabeth Bowen, _The House in Paris_.

_12 September, 1952._

Actually, Jim should have known as soon as he found the closed door unlocked. They may as well have left it open if it was going to be unlocked—but it was not they who had. Prideaux opened the door as quietly as he could, but there was still a soft click. He had found a golf pencil in the shop earlier, and now he had it wedged between his ring and index finger, on the heel of his clenched fist. Jim felt his pulse there, against that tiny hexagon, and nowhere else.

“I’m going,” Bill had said. “I’m going in there. No, shut up, just listen. I don’t care. How about that? Imagine if we carried it off. The tapes would be invaluable.”

“A week of tapes, _maybe_ ,” Jim had replied. “Before they move.”

“But who knows what we could record in a week?” Bill said.

“And recover, how, exactly?” said Jim, folding his arms. “Break in, again? Our recordings would be no good rotting in a Soviet office.”

“And we’re no good rotting in this British office,” Bill replied. “I’m going, and if I don’t signal you within a half hour, come after me.”

Jim’s disagreement hadn’t had much heart. He wanted to go, too. The only thing that snagged him was Bill’s insistence that it be tonight. His friend was imperious, but this was not the imperiousness of an impulsive mood. Somehow, Jim would have preferred that.

“Three for come over, four for stand by?” said Prideaux. “Five if Control calls, saying you’ve got the promotion?”

“And two short, two long for all clear, heading out,” confirmed Bill, ignoring the comment.

The pair had been sent to a station in East Berlin a few weeks ago on a mostly surveillance operation. They were instructed to run the local pavement artists in circles around a couple of Soviets, two men. The Circus had not graced Haydon and Prideaux with the why of these particular people, but they were at a point in their career where, whatever they were doing, it was important if _they_ were doing it. And they were trusted to wait. Operating in the dark like this did not bother Jim, but for once it seemed it was bothering Bill. Jim had never had trouble with waiting.

The Soviet pair were German in origin, or else had very convincing covers and accents. Their movements circled back to a certain large wooden building in a residential neighborhood. The building had no discernible purpose, and Haydon thought it was a safe house, getting ready to receive someone important. Jim thought that seemed sound. Tonight, the Soviet pair had gone out, to the airport, and Bill had gone in.

Now Jim waited across the street, motionless in the window of an empty shop. He cupped his hand over his pen light, testing it; the back of his palm glowed like a red firefly. Prideaux looked up at the building again, then checked his watch again. Thirty-two minutes. No signal yet.

A man walked hurriedly by with a newspaper. Then, a minute and forty-five seconds later, another man walked past on Jim’s side of the street. Jim stood even more still. Almost three minutes passed, and a third man appeared in front of the building. He climbed the front steps and unlocked the door.

As soon as the man was inside, Jim flashed a warning signal. Then he slipped out of the shop, not waiting for a reply. Across the street, he picked the lock with deft quiet and stepped inside. He knew the layout inside—the floor plans had not been hard to find and study, for Germans were nothing if not record keepers. He ducked down the front hall and then stood still, listening. All the lights were still off. He heard a step above, and moved towards the stairs.

Prideaux stepped carefully near walls and furniture, all of them blue spectres in the dimness of urban night. He began to climb the stairs gingerly. There was only one entrance to the building, so there was only one other person inside besides Bill. Unless someone had lain in wait.

Jim reached the top of the stairs. The air itself seemed heavier up here, like smoke. He paused and let his eyes adjust. Then he moved silently down the hall.

He tried the first door: closed and locked. The second was also closed, but it was unlocked. He opened it quietly.

So here he was. The room was a black cave except for four skewed squares of moonlight, drawn out on the floor like chalk. Somehow this light stopped at its edges, not illuminating anything else in the room. And worse, glancing at it reset Jim’s adjusted eyes, dimming the rest of the room.

If anyone was in there, they could probably see him in the doorway. He stepped quickly and quietly against the wall.

Jim stood for a second, letting the silence and darkness settle around him. Then he heard it. Breathing.

It was Bill. He could tell.

He reached for his pen light, to flash a signal. Then the breathing stopped. Jim’s stopped too. Some sympathy of habit or synchronicity—he held his breath.

Tentatively, Jim moved forward, without any thought in his head. He stepped around the moonlit grid. With a clatter and grunt he hit a very solid chair, and an instant later, felt a blow on the neck from behind.

Jim gritted his teeth against a cry as an iron hand clenched his wrist and wrenched his arm back. It pinned him, pushing his face into the seat of the chair.

“Don’t y— _Jim?_ ”

“ _Ow_.”

“Jesus, sorry, Jim.” Bill's hand released him right away. “I thought you were the second.”

“Christ, Bill,” whispered Jim, standing back up. His shoulder and upper arm burned.

“Did I hurt you?” said Bill, stepping backwards but instinctively avoiding the moonlit squares. The light reminded Jim of one of Bill’s damned paintings, he realized.

“Yes,” whispered Jim. “And will you lower your voice?”

“Sorry,” Bill said, in a whisper.

“Did you install your tape?”

“Yes, but I had to take care of that one.”

A ghostly Bill arm appeared in the shaft of moonlight, pointing behind Jim. Jim turned, squinted. In the back of the room, someone familiar was slumped, chest rising shallowly.

“God dammit, Bill,” said Jim, out loud.

“He didn’t see my face,” Bill hissed.

Jim rubbed his aching shoulder. He felt destabilized and half-blind. The pain, he could ignore, but not the sudden dislocation between them.

“They’re definitely bringing in someone important,” Bill whispered. “They’ve got the most secure room in the house all made up.”

“We need to get out,” whispered Jim, “Now. His second will be here any minute.”

Below their dark room, they heard the click and thunk downstairs of a front door opening.

Silence followed—they could not even hear footsteps. What little of Bill’s face Jim could see was blankly focused.

Then he leaned towards Jim, sliding his hand up Jim’s spine. The soldier tensed. He hated when Bill was physically intimate while they worked, and Jim’s shoulder still burned from his last touch. He saw Bill lean as if watching from the other side of a window

“Go get the tape recorder,” he breathed into Jim’s ear. “I’ll go downstairs.”

Bill’s breath was hot, and it had a shadow of liquor.

If for no other reason than to end the conversation and get Bill’s fingers off his spine, Jim nodded. The hand disappeared from his back and Bill melted back into the darkness.

Prideaux took the between-rooms route while Bill took the hallway. Once out the door, Haydon turned on the hall light and walked audibly, pretending to be the partner of the Soviet downstairs.

Jim found the recorder in the under-bed vent in the secure bedroom. He had to lie on his stomach and slide under the bed to reach it, and was opening the vent as quietly as he could when he heard a call below. The second Soviet was calling something to his partner, in terse German. Then Jim heard a thump. The light in the hall flickered.

He laid his ear against the hardwood floor. There were more thumps, and a yell. Urgent voice, then a gunshot. Then silence.

_21 August, 1950._

The painting he stood in front of was an unusual one for Bill. It was an interior scene, the corner of some room, with a slanted stamp of window-shaped sunlight. Jim found he sort of liked it, unlike most of Bill’s paintings—most of them, abstracts and portraits, gave him no reaction. But he believed he did not understand art, he believed he only understood Bill—so because the paintings were important to Bill, they were important to Jim.

There was, of course, the social aspect. Nothing more Bill Haydon than inviting everyone you know to a gallery opening to admire your work. Bill knew the gallery owner, otherwise he never would have got these displayed. Jim knew that much about art, anyway. Something about Bill’s being an artist he had never quite reconciled, and never really stopped thinking about. Art being so different from his many other talents, and of such a lesser magnitude—of skill—it still remained his defining characteristic in Jim’s mind. To Jim, Bill could never be a spy with an artistic habit; he was an artist with a day job. 

Bill broke away from a knot of people Jim didn’t know, and came over— “Jim!”

He threw his arm around Jim’s neck, beaming at him.

“Haydon, old boy,” Jim said, smiling.

“Glad you could make it,” said Bill.

“As always,” Jim answered. “I like this one, Bill.”

“Do you?” said Bill, looking at it. “A bit different from my usual.”

“Yes.”

“Is that why you like it?” said Bill, teasing. Jim smiled wryly.

Bill’s hand pressed on his shoulder, almost into his neck. It was not a polite touch; Jim really felt Bill’s weight there. This was normal for them, in public and even at the office. Not in a flirtatious way—it was just contact. Neither man regulated his behavior between the public and private, because self-regulation is far more noticeable than a guiltless openness. Bill often leaned on Jim at work, muttered to him privately in meetings, and by keeping everything casually above-board, left room for the rumor mill to run wild with his other indiscretions. Jim, meanwhile, lived in a crystalline invisibility. Surely others knew—they were after all, spies—but if it was unacknowledged, it remained, obliquely, unknown.

"Anyone here I would know?” Jim asked.

“Not many,” said Bill, looking around. “Shall I introduce you?”

“As?” 

“Distinguished college friend?” Bill said. "War hero?"

“Mysterious foreigner?” suggested Jim.

“The gallery owner?”

“Your agent?” said Jim. They both snickered.

Jim never tried to define what he loved about Bill, despite Bill’s various and specific characterizations of Jim. He recalled the week before, in the drawing room Bill used as a studio, Jim lying on a sheet splattered with long-dry paint while Bill worked on something or other. “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m painting?” Bill had said. Jim hadn’t looked, but replied, “Do you want me to?” Bill had laughed, and said, “Never interested in plumbing my mysteries, are you?” Jim had chuckled. “That’s what I love about you, Jim.” And Jim, embarrassed, had not known what to say. He never did.

When they had first met, they had taken to each other right away: there had been almost no period of acquaintance. From a life mostly temporary and foreign, Jim had been used to being defined—and defining himself—as individual and other. Around Bill, this faded untraceably. Jim finally knew what it was to be lonely, because he was not lonely anymore. He was not one but half of a pair.

Now, in their thirties, their lives, their careers, their sensibilities were more intertwined than ever. Jim did not actually dwell much on their relationship when they weren’t together. He was a man of his work, and mostly thought about that. Thinking about Bill, holding the idea of him in his mind and examining it, was a little strange.

Quite strange, actually, he thought, a while later, when the gallery was emptier. Jim found himself in front of the window painting again. Bill was off somewhere, chatting—Jim could see his reflection in a wall mirror. The scene felt familiar. Was this what Bill had been working on the other day? Was it a room in Jim’s own flat? Was it just invented? He looked at the attenuated squares of sunlight, the jagged edges where they intersected with the wall.

He had the unexpected thought that what he loved about Bill was unreal too. An invented image. He glanced at the reflection of Bill, where his friend was listening intently to someone out of frame. Invented in his mind, or in Bill’s?

Jim was not one to get lost in a thought, so when Bill kissed him up against the door of his bedroom that night, the idea was mostly gone. Bill tugged the front of Jim’s shirt up, untucking it from his pants. His hand slid up Jim’s stomach and chest, as Jim wrestled with the back of Bill’s shirt. He gave up and ran his hand up into Bill’s hair, kissing him hungrily. Bill angled his head, feeling Jim’s intoxicated breath in his own mouth. He started walking back towards the bed. Jim hung on but did not push forward, simply following.

But as Bill fell back on the bed, and Jim fell on top of him—some sensation of image remained. Like he were watching the scene through a slightly dislocated lens. He bent down and kissed Bill more deeply, and succeeded in forgetting. 

*  *  * 

Heavy feet cascaded up the stairs, into the other room. It was not Bill. A light was flicked on. A rough German voice swore, presumably seeing his unconscious partner. He slammed the door.

The steps stomped towards the room where Jim was hidden. He stayed still under the bed. Hardly breathing. One track of his mind was wondering if Bill was okay or if his friend had just been shot. His mind hurtled to death and panic in a second and let the thought run itself out in another second. Bill might be dead or dying, but there was nothing he could do. Jim accepted this, and accepted his panic both. On the other track, his mind was deciding whether to use the golf pencil or the heavy—but sharp-edged—vent cover for self-defense.

The heavy-booted feet marched in, turned, and the Soviet rifled through something. The bookshelf, Jim thought. Then, he turned and stomped out, slamming the door again.

Jim waited until he heard the feet downstairs, then replaced the vent and slid out. He stowed the recorder in the back pocket of his jacket, wincing slightly as his shoulder twisted. He had the distracted thought that if Bill was really dead, he would feel his last touch for a while yet.

The lights were flickering. Jim moved slowly down the stairs, exposed. He had no idea where the Soviet had gone, or if the Soviet was looking for a second Brit. _He wouldn’t really have shot Bill, would he?_ Jim reached the bottom of the stairs. The lights went out.

The darkness was so deep, Jim could not see at all. He felt the walls all round him, boxing him in, but could not even see a ghost of them. His eyes swam but did not adjust He walked his hands along the wall, towards where he’d heard the shot. He could not even see his hands on the wall—the darkness really was dense, smoky. Was there actually smoke? His fingertips hit a door frame.

Jim slowly moved around the doorway and looked in. Blackness. Slowly, he stepped in.

The city sounds fell away, replaced by a buzzing, deadened silence. Then Jim heard it again: Bill’s steady breaths. Shallower, but steady.

This time they did not halt. Jim stepped silently across the room and found him in the darkness. His hands connected with Bill’s shoulder, then back. _Alive_. Relief focused his actions. He knelt, rolled him over, and lifted Bill's head onto his knees.

Throwing a glance at the doorway, Jim pulled his pen light out. There were no signs of injury or blood, which meant he had just been knocked out, probably with a blow to the head like the one Bill had dealt the first Soviet. Jim quickly clicked the pen light off.

His hand was still against Bill’s cheek. He felt alive with relief, momentarily forgetting earlier. Bill was okay. He lowered his head, and pressed his face to the side of Bill’s. Eyes closed, Jim stayed like that a moment—pressed to Bill’s temple, breathing against him. 

Holding his head like that, Jim felt Bill wake up.

“Something's burning,” Bill murmured.

The sound of his voice, usually welcome, vibrated strangely in his skull. Jim sat up, the tentative repulsion from earlier returning with a throb in his shoulder. Jim felt uneasy again and didn’t know why.

_Why didn't he know it was me, upstairs?_

“I think the house is on fire,” said Bill.

“Come on, then,” said Jim. 

* 

Bill stopped Jim before he could start. “You don’t have to tell me what a mess that was.”

“Well you can forget about the bloody promotion, I will say,” Jim retorted. Bill seemed too calm for what had just happened. “This was a supposed to be a simple surveillance job, not a burning city job.”

“Hardly our fault the fusebox lit up,” said Bill, opening the door of their shared temporary house. _Your_ fault, Jim did not say.

Here was what had happened: the second Soviet’s gun had gone off during the scuffle with Bill, and, wonder of wonders, hit a fusebox. It had heated up and then caught fire, sending the whole building up. Jim felt certain the second Soviet had escaped. Not so about the first.

In their bathroom, Jim examined Bill’s head injury. The bathroom was small and white like a pastry box. A row of bulbs lit the mirror and white sink from above, and a small dark window sat like a porthole on the other wall. Jim checked his bruise, his dilated pupils. Looks fine, he told Bill.

“Can I take a look at your shoulder?” Bill asked, expecting to be shrugged off. But Jim just said okay, and started unbuttoning his shirt.

Here was what had really happened. Bill had placed a roll of film in the back of the bookshelf in a room that would soon be occupied by a colonel from the Centre. American intelligence, nothing terribly important. Then he had placed a recorder in the vent below the colonel's bed. Bill had never had high hopes for its staying hidden, but if it had, all the better. He could play both sides, and would. Then the first Soviet had returned early—no one but the colonel was to know about Bill—so Bill had hidden in another room, hoping the German wouldn’t find him. He had. Then so had Jim. Taking back the recorder did not make the mission a wash, since the film was still placed. Bill had then gambled and tried giving the code word to the second Soviet. The bad-tempered agent had knocked him out anyway. Jim had told him about the Soviet later rifling through the bookshelf, so Bill knew his cargo had been delivered. The gun really had misfired. Always bad luck.

Bill was thinking of none of this as he examined Jim’s shoulder. When the front door shut, work stayed shut outside it. Normally Jim was the same way, but not tonight. He was still subdued. He let Bill move his arm, extending and folding it like a damaged wing. He winced a little when Bill pressed around the bruise.

“The first one couldn’t have got out in time,” said Jim in a low voice.

Bill’s eyes found his in the mirror, and suddenly, Jim wished he was wearing a shirt. Bill still held his wrist. He remembered his vice grip on it an hour ago, the way he twisted it like an animal’s neck. He remembered Bill’s ever-steady breathing as he did it. He held it gently enough now. Jim felt, suddenly, not a distance between them, but an disconcerting proximity. A dangerous one. 

He did not feel as if he suddenly didn’t know Bill; Bill felt implacably, sinisterly the same. 

What was more, he felt Bill knew _him_ too well.

The air in the bathroom felt cool and stale. One of the bulbs above the mirror was flickering frantically. All the things Jim had, truly, always known Bill was capable of seemed to be scratching at the door.

“It looks fine,” murmured Bill. He lowered Jim’s arm slowly, and released his wrist. Jim leaned forward towards the sink, to seek substitute support—or lean away from Bill.

But Bill’s other hand was sliding around Jim’s stomach and making its spidery way up his chest. Jim watched it in the mirror until it reached his throat. Then he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, exhaling, just as Bill came forward, embracing him from behind. The fabric of Bill’s shirt was scarcely anything between them. Jim was already sweating where the V of Bill’s exposed chest pressed against his spine. Bill exhaled against Jim's bare shoulder.

“Don’t worry so much,” Bill murmured, as his hand fluttered around Jim’s jaw. His other hand slid purposefully south. He hooked his chin over Jim’s shoulder and breathed into his ear. He rubbed his thumb over Jim’s lips. Jim kept his eyes shut. He could not bring himself to turn around.

_20 October, 1972._

There are ways to check for watchers without appearing to check, ways to take a cab too far and double back, to enter Jim’s flat through the back door with the key you still have, though he isn’t there. There is no way to do any of this fast enough.

Bill had been channeling his panic for hours, after the initial almost violent burst. Now, alone for the first time all night, he could have let the levee break. But the work was not done. Everything felt sharp and clear cut like a canal. He was sailing on, straight on, port after port, task after task, knowing exactly what to do. As he mounted the stairs, he thought for the first time that this was the kind of task focus Jim would have.

This was immediately contravened by Bill pulling out his keyring and putting the wrong key into Jim’s lock. The key to his girlfriend’s flat. _Jesus._ He fumbled, yanking it out. Bill put the right key in and unlocked his friend’s door.

He stepped in, closed the door, and leaned against it. A new and keener guilt pierced him as he gripped the keys. As he smelled the smells of Jim’s home. A far less professional guilt. Trainers sat neatly next to boots next to office shoes, in a row near the door. A bike leaned on the wall. With a deeper twinge of guilt, Bill recognized the awful old painting of his that hung, further on down the hall. 

His search began in the small office. Jim Prideaux's apartment was tidy in that anonymous, almost ascetic military style that framed his life. It was his home of twenty-some years, but you'd never know it, never assume he wasn't a six-month tenant. His office desk was the only remotely messy part, with a few teetering stacks of files and letters. Most were financial or personal, the latter far outnumbered by the former. Bill only found one work file—old, a closed case. Some German Soviet agent, long dead.

He took that file and put it in his briefcase. Nothing else worth taking from the desk. Bill was looking for two things: things pertaining to this mission, and evidence of any dependents or partners. They would need to be dealt with. Would Jim have told him? Ten years ago—maybe not now. But there were no such letters on the desk. Bill checked the small file cabinet, but it was more useless nonsense—family files, older letters, papers from his brief postwar teaching stint. Nothing from work. This was to be expected. Now the fun began.

Bill dropped to his knees. He ran his hand under the bottom side of the desk, the drawers, the chair. He felt under other furniture in the office, the couch, the cabinet. He searched for fake books on the bookshelf—nothing. He reopened the desk drawers to check for dummy drawers and found one, but it was empty. He stood again, and felt for loose floorboards. He tried to walk over the floor like Jim, strides long and purposeful. Nothing budged.

The living room was tiny and Bill ignored it. It was the most public room in the house, and though some might conceal things there in defiance of expectations, Jim was not that sort. The bedroom was next. Nothing under this furniture either, no dummy drawers. And no sign of a partner, unless that partner wore the exact size and style of clothing Jim did. Which, Bill reflected in a moment of lightness, was not impossible.

The kitchen was also clean. Standing at the counter, Bill recalled their period as flatmates during their first few months at the War Office. He recalled the earthquake terror of the blitz that gave way to a breathless present—a life with no past, with terrifying momentum towards no future. How the prospect of deployment felt absolutely no different from staying in London. Bill remembered the other night, in his own much larger kitchen, which Jim could make so much smaller. His low voice, slightly hoarse: “Control’s sending me on a mission. No one else’s supposed to know.”

“Why tell me, then?”

“He’s gone mad, Bill. He thinks there's a mole...”

Bill had evaded easily. It was not hard for him to divert Jim when he had to, which wasn't often. And he had other distractions besides.

Bill remembered their reflection in his darkened kitchen window—just glimpsed as Jim moved from Bill’s lips to his neck, his hungry breathing belied by the hesitant way his hands rested on Bill’s shoulders—almost shaking. Their reflection had caught Bill’s eye because of the twisted way Jim’s back moved, as he bent to kiss Bill’s neck. The way his spine almost showed through his shirt. It had troubled Bill. Jim was too old for this, all this. He had slid his hands up Jim’s back as if to straighten it, up to grip his neck.

Bill moved to the bathroom, the most telltale place for a partner. He found soap, one toothbrush, the regular shaving apparatus, a flat-blade screwdriver for some god damn reason. A hairbrush. No hairs of a different length or color. There was no one else. Bluntly, it hit him: there was no one else. There likely never had been.

His eyes squeezed shut. Bill leaned over the sink, covering his face before the mirror. For the first time, Bill had an idea of what regretting treason might feel like. 

He had split himself into two in this life: into an infamous patriot and a self-serving spy. He could have been one, one marvelous man—they could have been. Once. But there was no world for such a man and Bill Haydon lived instead as two indecent facsimiles.

When his eyes opened, they found the bathroom vent in the mirror. It had slot screws.

Bill took the screwdriver from the drawer and opened the vent. Inside, there was one worn-out file folder. He pulled it down and three objects slid out—a map, and, inexplicably, two crayons. The map was a city map of Brno. Bill tucked these into his bag with the other file, feeling relief spread over the skin of his guilt. This, at least, he could do for Jim. And there was nothing more to find, because he would have found it.

It was when he paused to kick the corner of the tiny living room rug that he noticed it. Among other uninteresting furniture, Jim had a small shelf of framed photos—and one unframed. It was a black and white photo of Bill, he saw, somewhere in his late thirties. His tie was loose, and he was smiling, beaming at someone out of frame.

Bill had no idea who took the picture or when. He reached out, then jerked back as if scalded—there was something unbearable about the lack of frame, how the photo leaned unobtrusively among the framed others. Colorless. Awaiting something that had never come. Somewhere, blankly echoing walls enclosed Jim Prideaux. Bill realized then, with a certainty that clenched his throat, that Jim was lost to him forever.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Note: recently updated so that dates align better with _A Legacy of Spies_ , but probably still not-quite-canon.  
> \- [Movie script excerpts](http://cultx.tumblr.com/post/121013764892/the-script-of-tinker-tailor-soldier-spy-a-little)  
> \- Title from [here](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/364997-o-what-a-world-of-unseen-visions-and-heard-silences).  
> \- I'm on tumblr [@davidfosterwallaceandgromit](http://davidfosterwallaceandgromit.tumblr.com/)  
> Thanks for reading <3


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